Monday, April 22, 2013

Quick and Easy Craft #1- Ombre Striped Tea Towels

While I am soaking up the rays in Florida (while wearing SPF 50 and a big floppy hat), I will leave you with 4 days worth of quick and easy crafts. You may have seen some of them multiple times. Some may be new. All with be easy, fairly quick and inexpensive ways to entertain your friends. Enjoy!

How do you entertain two of your favorite people during a cold (and spitting snow) day in April? You make them do crafts with you. And then you take them to look at the flooding Mississippi river. What can I say? I know how to entertain.

In the middle is my best friend from my days at the University of Northern Iowa, Amanda. I helped Amanda pass Physics. Amanda made sure I didn’t study for 4 years straight. Equally important. On the right is my best friend from childhood, Melissa. Melissa and I share a love of Adam Sandler, Sangria and talking about the good ol’ days of being nerdy high school kids. Neither of these fine ladies thought they were good at crafting. I disagree.

Our first adventure was ombre striped tea towels.

I love tea towels. They remind me of the summer days I spent painting them with my brother and Grandma when we were little. Memories. Painted mice/day of the week towels are cute but my tastes have slowly evolved over the years. Thankfully.

Here’s what you’ll need to paint my ombre striped tea towels.

Tea towels (You can find them at Target, Wal-Mart, Joann’s, etc. I got a pack of 4 from Target for $4.)

I’m not brand loyal. I use whatever we have around. The blue. The green doesn’t matter.

Paint brush

Something to place under your towels.

You will start by taping off your towel. My type A personality makes projects like this hard so I handed this step over to Amanda. She tells me the secret to her taping success is that she “just doesn’t care.” Write that down. It’s a very important tip. She did a fantastic job. She tells me she is available for hire.

Place your professionally taped towel on to something to protect your table. We used cardboard.

Next you will need to pick your color. We decided to start with coral. Who doesn’t love coral? My paints were all acrylic so we picked two parts paint to one part fabric medium. We added some white painting to the coral for each stripe to create the ombre effect. Take your paint brush and cover the striped areas!

Keep adding white paint, fabric medium and painting stripes. When your painting is complete, remove the painter’s tape. This part was terrifying. Luckily we had little bleeding and it looked pretty darn awesome.

We hung the completed towels to dry on my laundry rack.

The towels will need to be heat set with an iron and then washed. I’m excited to add a little striped cheer to our kitchen.

Are you a striped tea towel fan? Do your force your non-crafty friends into crafting?

While I am soaking up the rays in Florida (while wearing SPF 50 and a big floppy hat), I will leave you with 4 days worth of quick and easy crafts. You may have seen some of them multiple times. Some may be new. All with be easy, fairly quick and inexpensive ways to entertain your friends. Enjoy!

How do you entertain two of your favorite people during a cold (and spitting snow) day in April? You make them do crafts with you. And then you take them to look at the flooding Mississippi river. What can I say? I know how to entertain.

In the middle is my best friend from my days at the University of Northern Iowa, Amanda. I helped Amanda pass Physics. Amanda made sure I didn’t study for 4 years straight. Equally important. On the right is my best friend from childhood, Melissa. Melissa and I share a love of Adam Sandler, Sangria and talking about the good ol’ days of being nerdy high school kids. Neither of these fine ladies thought they were good at crafting. I disagree.

Our first adventure was ombre striped tea towels.

I love tea towels. They remind me of the summer days I spent painting them with my brother and Grandma when we were little. Memories. Painted mice/day of the week towels are cute but my tastes have slowly evolved over the years. Thankfully.

Here’s what you’ll need to paint my ombre striped tea towels.

Tea towels (You can find them at Target, Wal-Mart, Joann’s, etc. I got a pack of 4 from Target for $4.)

I’m not brand loyal. I use whatever we have around. The blue. The green doesn’t matter.

Paint brush

Something to place under your towels.

You will start by taping off your towel. My type A personality makes projects like this hard so I handed this step over to Amanda. She tells me the secret to her taping success is that she “just doesn’t care.” Write that down. It’s a very important tip. She did a fantastic job. She tells me she is available for hire.

Place your professionally taped towel on to something to protect your table. We used cardboard.

Next you will need to pick your color. We decided to start with coral. Who doesn’t love coral? My paints were all acrylic so we picked two parts paint to one part fabric medium. We added some white painting to the coral for each stripe to create the ombre effect. Take your paint brush and cover the striped areas!

Keep adding white paint, fabric medium and painting stripes. When your painting is complete, remove the painter’s tape. This part was terrifying. Luckily we had little bleeding and it looked pretty darn awesome.

We hung the completed towels to dry on my laundry rack.

The towels will need to be heat set with an iron and then washed. I’m excited to add a little striped cheer to our kitchen.

Are you a striped tea towel fan? Do your force your non-crafty friends into crafting?

Ooo, love the towels. Now I want to go make one. That could be disastrous. I AM the non-crafty friend that has been forced into crafting. I actually crafted this weekend with my sister-in-laws. And it was fun. What is happening to me??

oh super cute! when we were on vacation with family for thanksgiving i made sure that i shipped thanksgiving crafts ahead of time for the kiddos. plus we did some sand crafts. yes we all had lots of laughs over me and my inability not to craft for a week but the kiddos really enjoyed...and so didn't i:) have a great trip!

These are awesome! Guess what the mothers are getting for mothers day...I will have to call in someone to tape off my stripes too - otherwise there will be rules and pencils and levels involved & I'm pretty sure that's not the idea!